Thursday, August 19, 2010

The "Mosque" at Ground Zero

It's 12 minutes long, but any good American would take the time to watch it.

My boss and I were having our usual morning chat session this morning, and I asked if he'd had a chance to watch it. He told me he hadn't been on Facebook in days, so I gave him a brief synopsis.

Now, my boss and i get along remarkably well, and have a lot in common. Our brains work in much the same ways, but please don't take that to mean we have similar opinions on most things, because we don't. I'm about as liberal as they come, and he's staunchly conservative. When I finished telling him of the video, the jovial mood that had been flowing through the room suddenly became serious and rather muted.

"I wouldn't watch that," he said, deadpan.

He's one of THOSE.

He's one of the guys saying that building this community center is insulting to the memory of the victims of NINE ELEVEN. He's concerned that if this community center gets built, millions of terrorists will be all "YAY!!! We got into their backyard!!! YAY!!!" He doesn't care that there's already a Mosque a few blocks from the site where the twin towers stood, nor that it's been there since before the twin towers were built. He doesn't even want to watch this video, not even for information purposes, not even to possibly gain another foothold on refuting those fucking liberal assholes that think this is okay.

I don't get it. I don't understand that level of close-mindedness. In the words of Andy Dufresne, "How can you be so obtuse?" I just don't get it. The backlash against the building of this community center is incendiary and cruel and unAmerican. It's fear mongering. It's classless. It's hateful. And I don't want to live in a country where people like that are in charge and make the rules; especially not when that country claims to be "Land of the Free" and touts its "Freedom of Religion" rights as one reason it's better than the rest of the world.

And it really shakes me that someone I admire so much is a part of the population which I view as the cruel, fear mongering, hateful, bad Americans. It makes me sad. It makes me think less of him, and I hate that.

Watch the video. And if you feel the same as my boss afterward, please don't tell me about it. I can't stand to have my bubble busted any more today.